ducky556,

For hooking up the cable box, component might be the best way to hook that up (red, blue, green, + audio). If you want to record shows, many of those cable boxes have a "picture out" button that you'd hook to the DVD Input. DVD output should go back to the television.

Some DVD/VCR combos have their own internal tuner, which can confuse the issue, but recording directly from the cable box may give the overall easiest experience.

Keep me posted!

--HDTech